Genesis 22:2

And he said, take now thy son,.... Directly, immediately; not thine ox, nor thy sheep, nor thy ram, nor thy lamb, nor thy servant, but thy son: thine only [son] Isaac; for, though Ishmael was his

And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.

Not a word here but might pierce a heart of stone, much more so tender a father as Abraham was. Take now, without demurring or delay, I allow thee no time for thy consideration, own proper son; not a beast, not an enemy, not a stranger, though that had been very difficult to one so kind to all strangers; not a dear servant, not a friend or familiar: thine only son, not by birth, for so he had another, Ishmael; but this was his only son by Sarah, his first and legitimate wife; who only had the right of succession both to his inheritance, and to his covenant and promises; and this only was now left to him, for Ishmael was abandoned and gone from him: and this must be such a son as Isaac, once matter of laughter and great joy, now cause of inexpressible sorrow; thy Benoni; a son of the promise, of so great hopes, and such pregnant virtue and piety as this story shows; whom thou lovest, peculiarly and superlatively, even as thy own soul: and get thee into the land of Moriah; a place at a great distance, and to which thou shalt go but leisurely, , that thou mayst have thy mind all that while fixed upon that bloody act, which other men’ s minds can scarce once think of without horror; and so thou mayst offer him in a sort ten thousand times over before thou givest the fatal blow; and offer him there with thine own hands, and cruelly take away the life which thou hast in some sort given him; for a burnt-offering, wherein by the law of the burnt-offering then known to Abraham, afterwards published to all Israel, his throat was to be cut, his body dissected into quarters, his bowels taken out, as if he had been some notorious traitor, and vile malefactor and miscreant, and afterwards he was to be burnt to ashes, that if possible there might be nothing left of him: and this must be done upon one of the mountains, which I shall tell thee of; not secretly in a corner, as if it were a work of darkness, and thou wert ashamed or afraid to own it; but in a public and open place, in the view of heaven, earth, God, angels, and men. Which horrid and stupendous act it may be easily conjectured what reproach and blasphemy it would have occasioned against the name and worship of God and the true religion, and what shame and torment to Abraham, from his own self-accusing mind, from the clamours of his wife, and all his friends and allies, and what a dangerous and mischievous example this would have been to all future generations. That faith that could surmount these and many more difficulties, and could readily and cheerfully rest upon God in the discharge of such a duty, no wonder it is so honoured by God, and celebrated by all men, yea, even by the heathens, who have translated this history into their fables.

Genesis 22:2 And he said, Take now thy son, thine only [son] Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.Ver. 2. Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, &c.] This was the last of Abraham’ s ten trials, and the sorest. All our troubles to this are but as the stivers and chips of that cross upon which this good patriarch was crucified. Origen hence persuades parents to bear patiently the loss of their children. Laetus offer filium Deo, esto sacerdos animae filii tui ,& c. Abraham was not only to kill his only son (which yet was more than to have torn out his own heart with his own hands), but to cut him in pieces, to lay him orderly on the altar, after the manner of a sacrifice, and to burn him to ashes; himself making and tending the fire, and putting him in, piece after piece, when any was out. A hard and heavy task: especially since it directly crossed the promise, that "in Isaac all nations of the earth should be blessed"; and seemed to involve the utter ruin of all mankind. Here, reason was at a stand. It was faith only that could extricate the perplexed patriarch, by giving him to know "that God was able to raise him up even from the dead". Hoc Abrahamum fecit αμεταπτωτον. This was it that kept him from tripping. Get thee into the land of Moriah.] Both Abraham’ s great temptations began with one strain, Vade tibi , Get thee gone. Here God led Abraham into temptation, but delivered him from evil. Have you not been tempted, saith the holy man, in this or that kind? It is because God in mercy would not "lead you into temptation." Yea, this is in some sort more to be acknowledged than victory when you are tempted. For not to be tempted is more immediately from God, and less in man’ s power than to prevail against temptation. Since nothing doth overcome us against our will: but without our will God doth lead us into trials: for he knoweth we would taste little of these if we might be our own carvers. Bain’ s Letters.

(2) Take now.—Now is not an adverb of time, but an interjection of entreaty, usually coupled with requests, and intended to soften them. It thus makes the words more an exhortation than a command. Thine only son Isaac.—The words in the original are more emphatic, being, “Take, I pray, thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, even Isaac.” If childlessness was so unendurable in old time to Abraham (Genesis 15:2), what would it be now, after so many years of enjoyment of a son, and after giving up Ishmael for his sake (Genesis 17:18)? The land of Moriah.—Moriah may either mean Jah is teacher (see Note on Genesis 12:6), or Jah is provider. The first is supported by Isaiah 2:3, where the verb is rendered will teach; but the second agrees best with Genesis 22:8; Genesis 22:14. If this be the meaning, the name would be derived from this event, and would signify the place where “Jehovah will Himself provide the sacrifice.” It has been suggested by many able commentators, that the place meant was Moreh in Sichem, and that the site of the sacrifice was, as the Samaritans affirmed, the natural altar upon the summit of Mount Gerizim. But as Abraham and Isaac reached the spot on the third day, and evidently at an early hour, Gerizim is too remote from Beer-sheba for this to be possible Even Jerusalem is distant enough, as the journey from Beer-sheba takes twenty and a half hours; and travellers in those days had to cook their own food, and prepare their own sleeping accommodation. We may notice also, that Moriah is described as “a land,” in some part of which Abraham was to be shown the special mountain intended for the sacrifice; Moreh, on the contrary, was a place where Abraham had lived, and which was therefore well known to him. Offer him there for a burnt offering.—Hengstenberg and others have argued that Abraham was not to kill Isaac, but to surrender him spiritually to God, and sanctify him by a burnt offering. But this is contradicted by the narrative itself (Genesis 22:10), and by the passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews referred to above, where the victory of Abraham’s faith is described as consisting in the belief, that even though Isaac were killed, nevertheless the promise would still in some Divine manner be fulfilled in him.

Verse 2. Take now thy son] Bishop Warburton's observations on this passage are weighty and important. "The order in which the words are placed in the original gradually increases the sense, and raises the passions higher and higher: Take now thy son, (rather, take I beseech thee נא na,) thine only son whom thou lovest, even Isaac. Jarchi imagines this minuteness was to preclude any doubt in Abraham. Abraham desired earnestly to be let into the mystery of redemption; and God, to instruct him in the infinite extent of the Divine goodness to mankind, who spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, let Abraham feel by experience what it was to lose a beloved son, the son born miraculously when Sarah was past child-bearing, as Jesus was miraculously born of a virgin. The duration, too, of the action, Genesis 22:4, was the same as that between Christ's death and resurrection, both which are designed to be represented in it; and still farther not only the final archetypical sacrifice of the Son of God was figured in the command to offer Isaac, but the intermediate typical sacrifice in the Mosaic economy was represented by the permitted sacrifice of the ram offered up, Genesis 22:13, instead of Isaac." See Dodd. Only son] All that he had by Sarah his legal wife. The land of Moriah] This is supposed to mean all the mountains of Jerusalem, comprehending Mount Gihon or Calvary, the mount of Sion and of Acra. As Mount Calvary is the highest ground to the west, and the mount of the temple is the lowest of the mounts, Mr. Mann conjectures that it was upon this mount Abraham offered up Isaac, which is well known to be the same mount on which our blessed Lord was crucified. Beer-sheba, where Abraham dwelt, is about forty-two miles distant from Jerusalem, and it is not to be wondered at that Abraham, Isaac, the two servants, and the ass laden with wood for the burnt-offering, did not reach this place till the third day; see Genesis 22:4.

2. thy son] Observe the cumulative force of the successive words, “thy son,” “only son,” “whom thou lovest,” “Isaac,” indicating the severity of the test about to be applied to Abraham’s faith. only son] Ishmael is here disregarded, as in Genesis 22:12; Genesis 22:16. He is no longer considered one of the true family. The LXX τὸνἀγαπητόν (Lat. unigenitum) is, however, perhaps due to the thought of Ishmael. into the land of Moriah] Moriah is here the name of a country, containing mountains on one of which Abraham is to offer Isaac. The proper name “Moriah” is found elsewhere only in 2 Chronicles 3:1, “in Mount Moriah,” i.e. the hill in Jerusalem, on which was the threshing-floor of Ornan, the Jebusite, where the Angel appeared to David. This was the site of the Temple of Solomon. Obviously the expression, “the land of Moriah,” and the reference to the mountains in it, cannot here denote Jerusalem. Jerusalem was a town in the days of the patriarchs (see Genesis 14:18). More probably the Chronicler, in 2 Chronicles 3:1, has recorded the popular tradition of his own time, according to which the scene of the appearance to David and the site of the temple at Jerusalem were identified with the place of Isaac’s sacrifice; and the name “Moriah,” occurring in this passage of Genesis was therefore popularly, although inaccurately, assigned to the Temple hill. What “the land of Moriah” was, we can no longer determine. Possibly the word “Moriah” is the Heb. adaptation of some earlier name, which was lost in the transmission of the story. The name Moriah probably contains a play upon the words meaning “to see” and “Jehovah,” cf. Genesis 22:14. It provided a puzzle to the versions. Lat. terra visionis, Sym. γῆὀπτασίας, Aq. τὴνγῆντὴνκαταφανῆ, LXX τὴνγῆντὴνὑψηλήν. The Syriac Peshitto renders, “the land of the Amorites,” with which agrees the conjecture of Dillmann and Ball. Tuch and Bleek conjectured “the land of Moreh,” cf. Genesis 12:6; but the Hebron district of “the land of Moreh” would be much too close to Beer-sheba to suit the description in Genesis 22:4. Hence Wellhausen’s conjecture “the land of the Hamorites” (i.e. Shechem: cf. Genesis 34 and Judges 9:28). Probably the name is irrecoverable by conjecture. Rabbinic interpretations called it “the place of fear,” or “of worship.” Joseph. Ant. i. § 13, τὸΜόριονὅρος. for a burnt offering] A whole burnt-offering, viz. an offering of complete dedication to God. It was wholly consumed in the fire, as distinct from an offering in which the offerers themselves participated: see note on Genesis 8:20. It was a propitiatory offering: cf. Leviticus 1:4.

2. He said — Doubtless in some open and positive way. There is no evidence that this word came by a vision of the night.